


A New Era of Culinary War - Crackfic

by VoltronShitpostBot1 (ThatOneDinosaurOverThere), VoltronShitpostBot2 (Almagester)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Aliens, Also absolutely nothing they want, Alternate Universe - Chefs, Crack, Food Trucks, Gen, Humor, Memes, No Angst, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, References to Drugs, References to Shakespeare, Russian Mafia, Science who? I don't know her, Swearing, These Pockets HOT, We're here to give the voltron fandom everything they want, reptilians
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-06-30 21:26:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15760014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatOneDinosaurOverThere/pseuds/VoltronShitpostBot1, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Almagester/pseuds/VoltronShitpostBot2
Summary: A group of culinary students and masters alike are met with an unexpected union with two food chain managers undercover, where they will carry on the fight that's lasted between them and a Russian mafia gang for years. In a retelling of Voltron's classic tale, the world finds an unlikely hero willing to protect the world at any cost.Something much more lighthearted in case one requires an escape from the canon's angst.





	A New Era of Culinary War - Crackfic

**Author's Note:**

> We'll be sticking pretty close to the episodes in the beginning, but we'll probably begin to deviate later on!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This first chapter is basically just a big ass recap of the first episode (which we've long forgotten about until now) with our dumb ass humour and AU mixed in. Things will probably get more interesting as time goes on!

 

Shiro squeezed the glaring lights out of his eyes, walking uneasily upon the stage as one of the two lasting contestants. Standing where he was, this was the farthest any school-funded trip took any two Garrison students, so help him if he failed to put that money to good use.

As the judges zipped between the two pedestals, Shiro felt strong hands squeeze his shoulders. The classmate that survived through the trials of the competition by his side until now, Matt Holt, smiled and whispered, “Don’t worry, you’ll do great. You’re the best chef I know.”

Shiro nodded and managed a weak smile, in the comfortably-seated crowd, he could spot Matt’s father giving both of them a thumbs-up. With increasing apprehension, Shiro and Matt watched the judges scrutinize and taste their dishes, jotting down notes in inexplicably thick notebooks.

Shiro and Matt had been partnered together during the competition until the final round, where they had to face each other as a result of being the remaining team.

Shiro stared up at the ceiling, pretending the dust motes were sheep, aimlessly prancing through a pasture. Matt gave his hand a squeeze that barely lasted long enough. The judges seemed to be wrapping up and discussing their verdict.

Time impossibly slowed down even more as the judges situated themselves evenly behind the pedestals. Crisp, unsettlingly perfect black blazers blurred together with the white of dress shirts, lonely stars dotting vast expanses of space. Shiro almost forgot to breathe.

Any culinary student in their right mind would hate, absolutely loathe, Kerberos Stadium. Despite the title of Stadium, the place hosted mainly cooking competitions, and it was stuffy, uptight, with very severe maintenance. However, it was a beauty of a building, there was a sense of honour and prestige with the discomfort.

“This competition will now come to a close. Chefs...”

Matt and Shiro both tried to stand a bit taller.

“You’ve gone through trials and hardships, faced different people with constant aptitude and passion for cuisine, and all of that now comes down to this.”

_ Get on with it, come on, we know what we’re here for _ , Shiro couldn’t help thinking.

“Matthew Holt, your flavours burst in the mouth. The initial taste is striking, but doesn’t overpower the pleasant aftertaste. The presentation is intriguing and unique.”

Shiro held back a smile with Matt’s audible exhale of relief.

“Takashi Shirogane, your touch with spices is exquisite, nearly divine. However, you seem to rely on that which you are most comfortable, and you probably know Kerberos is all about challenging the mind and soul, yes?”

Too afraid to speak, Shiro nodded. Averting his gaze from the main judge, Shiro concentrated on the intent gaze of the judge to the left. There was something keen, but it was almost comforting, the way he looked at him like a sagely teacher spotting potential in a student.

The main judge continued, “However unconfident you may feel about what you’ve made, do not forget how much talent you truly possess, to have allowed both of you to come this far.”

Shiro pretended not to see the tight-lipped smile.

“The winner of this year’s Kerberos Competition is…”

Shiro closed his eyes. The familiar presence of Matt Holt next to him, and the more faraway yet powerful presence of Sam washed over him. He suddenly remembered about the audience, how they’ve been rooting for different people in the long hours of the competition. How many were even rooting for him now?

Frankly, Shiro couldn’t give a damn about some trophy or fifteen minutes of glory. But if someone had to win, he would’ve wanted Matt to win.

Unfortunately, because the universe didn’t care about Shiro’s simple wishes, the main judge continued.

“The winner is Takashi Shirogane!”

Shiro’s vision began to swim, the keen-eyed judge had vanished. Through the applause and commotion, Shiro’s last coherent thought:

_ Fuck, I shouldn’t have eaten those fifteen hot pockets before I left. _

Shiro collapsed, the crowd gasped and in no time, Sam and Matt Holt were by his side.

Sam shook him by the shoulders, “What is it, son? Did you eat something bad?”

Shiro wanted to vocalize his regret for stress-eating hot pockets, but the ceiling started to cave. “I...I think I’m hallucinating…”

Sam looked up, the ceiling had collapsed under the force of a ship. The audience shrieked and streamed out of Kerberos like a turbulent river, the ship paid them no attention.

Shiro caught an unfamiliar flag printed on the hull before passing out.

\-----

“Culinary Garrison truck log 5-11-14, begin check-in for Kerberos sales.” The driver of a hot dog truck unrolled the window and let the breeze comb through his well-groomed hair. His sharp turns and skidding wheels the least of his concern.

On the other hand, another boy was swallowing down his nausea at the counter as he tried to keep condiments from rolling on the floor. “Urgh, Lance? Could you keep this thing straight?”

“Relax, Hunk, I’m just getting a feel for the wheel.”

A voice shrouded in static sounded from the intercoms.

[ _ We need an extra truck on the west side of Kerberos. I repeat, extra truck on west side of Kerberos. _ ]

Lance shouted with gusto, “Aw right, let’s go, team! Pidge, you heard the guy, west side of Kerberos.”

“Got it.” Pidge unrolled a disproportionately large map, adjusting his glasses before tracing the roads with a finger. Hunk remained struggling with the condiment bottles.

While Hunk made a valiant effort to keep things together, a final swerve caused him to retch into the sink.

“Oh, thar she blows.” Lance drove a bit slower to compensate for the added shaking of the run-down truck. There were no signs of Hunk feeling any better. Lance cruised through the streets with Pidge’s instructions for a bit longer. Then they reached the west parking lot of Kerberos.

“Okay, fellas. Prepare the kitchen for oncoming customers.” Lance zoomed precariously around the lot to find a place to park.

Pidge glanced back at Hunk, who was still vomiting into the sink. “I don’t think that’s possible with our current, uh, gastrointestinal issues.”

“I’m okay.” Hunk croaked, holding a thumbs up with his right hand.

“Hi okay, I’m Dad,” Lance replied as the truck hit a rough speed bump, which made his voice shoot up an octave.

Hunk started vomiting again, probably from the joke this time.

Pidge screamed, “Car! Watch out for the car!”

Lance only laughed as he narrowly skims the back of a car leaving its parking space, earning him an angry honk. “Don’t worry, you know what they called me back at my job as a delivery boy for SkiptheDishes.com (#notspons)? They called me ‘Sriracha’ ‘cause of how I squeeze the bottle.”

Immediately after saying this, Lance swerved into a tree to avoid hitting a cat.

[ _ Simulation failed. _ ] Said the same voice of static that had previously requested backup.

Pidge grumbled and rubbed the spot on his forehead that struck the dashboard, “Nice job, Sriracha.”

“That name, by the way, makes zero sense and nobody called you that.” Remarks Hunk, wiping his mouth with the collar of his shirt.

The scenic views of the Kerberos square dissipated along with the ruined truck, leaving the three students no time to prepare for Iverson’s scathing remarks. Not a single student even liked him for his personality. What kind of person loses an eye at a culinary school anyway?

“Alright assholes! Let’s use that as an example of what  _ not _ to do in this simulation, shall we? Can anybody point out what these cadets did wrong?”

A girl raised her hand, “The main chef puked in the sink.”

Iverson smiled, “Yes, and last I checked, vomit is not used to unclog sinks.”

“The navigator wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.” Another student called out.

Before Iverson responded, a voice pointed out the obvious, but their tone was unsure, and it sounded more like a question. “The driver crashed the car?”

Then some dickhead cried out, “Uhh, they’re all gay so they can’t drive.” The class erupted in laughter.

Iverson pretended not to hear, “All big mistakes, but above all, they refused to cooperate with each other. Such lack of teamwork is what may have cost the lives of the Kerberos competitors in the strange disappearances.”

Pidge piped up, “That’s utter bullshit, sir!”

Iverson blinked once, “What was that?”

Lance quickly clamped a hand over Pidge’s mouth, laughing nervously, “You see, Pidge hit his head pretty hard against the dashboard when we crashed; but, point taken, sir.”

“Don’t make me remind you that the only reason you’ve made it this far is because one of our best students dropped out due to disciplinary issues.”

_ He probably scooped Iverson’s left eye out with a spoon or something… _ Lance thought to himself.  _ Oh, he’s still talking. _

“Needless to be said, do  _ not _ follow in his footsteps. Next!”

\-----

“Lights out in five!” Ordered Iverson through the school’s intercom.

Hunk sighed as he hugged the wall and tried to stand as stiff as possible. “Please, tell me why we’re doing this again? Last time we snuck out we landed ourselves straight in the principal’s office!” Hunk tried to whisper.

Lance put a hand on his shoulder, “Don’t worry buddy, all of that is in the past. There’s no way I’m letting us get in trouble this time.” Lance ran a hand through his hair as he continued, “We’re gonna grab Pidge, ditch this place, stroll into town and pick up some lovely ladies-” He was interrupted by Hunk shushing him, “Dude, I hear guards! We have to hide.” Hunk explained.

Hunk and Lance dove into the nearby garbage cans as the night guards walked by, with some difficulty fitting Hunk in his. They were both reminded of an unmemorable dinner with the lingering smell of potatoes. Despite the Garrison being a culinary school, the food served in the cafeteria was moderate at best.

One of the night guards brought a walkie-talkie to her mouth and spoke into it, “F-3 West hallway all clear. Over.”

Once the guards had left the scene, Pidge entered carrying a large backpack around his shoulders. The short student stalked his way through the hall and around a corner in the opposite direction of the guards. Both Lance and Hunk popped out of the trash cans.

“Well, I guess our Pidge has a couple of secrets under his sleeve. Let’s see where he’s off to.” Lance dusted himself off and started tiptoeing in the same direction.

Hunk threw his hands in the air, “Oh, yay, we get to find out that Pidge is a Russian spy or an alien. Or worse, there’s a secret cult in our school!”

“Come on, Hunk!”

The two of them followed Pidge up to the rooftop, where Pidge had set up a makeshift workspace. He was typing away at a computer, pieces of paper and other supplies were littered around him.

Lance went up behind Pidge and leaned in, “You come up here to plan world domination or something?”

Pidge yelped as he shot forward, he re-adjusted himself and glared at Lance. “Don’t scare me like that, you asshole!”

“Sorry,” Lance shrugged.

Pidge sighed. “To answer your question, no, I’m not interested in taking over the world. But I do know who is.” He chuckled.

At that statement, Hunk lifted his head from reading one of Pidge’s notes. “So you  _ are _ a Russian spy!” He exclaimed while pointing a finger at the accused.

“Why would I be a Russian spy?” Pidge cried, “And get your hands off my stuff!” He forced the paper out of Hunk’s hand and placed it far away from him.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Lance pinched the bridge of his nose. “Who’s trying to take over the world?”

Pidge furrowed his brows, “Why do you need to know?”

“Well, Iverson says we need to bond. So there shouldn’t be any secrets between us, and Hunk and I are totally trustworthy!” Lance retorted.

“Yeah, what he said.” Hunk agreed while skimming through more of Pidge’s papers.

“Hunk put down my notes or so help me.” Pidge growled. Hunk groaned and placed them aside, he scooted himself closer to the other two students.

“Fine, I guess I’ll tell you. Ever since the Kerberos incident happened. I’ve found several articles about it on the deep web, during the finals of the cooking competition a mysterious ship broke into Kerberos Stadium and kidnapped three people. The victims, as you know, are Takashi Shirogane, Matt, and Sam Holt. All three were involved with this school. A witness was able to snap a photo of the ship, and look-” Pidge scrolled over to an image that displayed a foreign aircraft and zoomed in to view a purple flag with detailed foreign markings painted on the hull of the ship. The paint was faded and had chipped off in places.

Hunk made a gesture with his hands, “Aliens.”

Pidge adjusted his glasses, “ Anyway, someone looked into it and the flag traces back to a mafia gang that allegedly worked for the Russian government. Their name remains unknown as they disappeared almost twenty years ago, right after they were defeated in a gang war by another group called the Blade.” Pidge explained as he held up a notepad with scribbles on it. “I intercepted a signal from Russia and it just repeats one thing: ‘Jimmy the Greek’.” He tapped the same words scrawled on the notepad for emphasis.

“My brain is hurting so much right now, how the everloving hell are chefs and one food chain connected to Russian mafia gangs!?” Lance exclaimed, laying down on the rooftop with one of his legs raised.

Pidge opened his mouth to respond, but in the distance, tires screeched against asphalt. The three looked over to see a van swerving into the main gates, effectively unhinging them and throwing the van off its course. The vehicle then crashes into the security structure operating the gates. A large aircraft hovered above, it’s exterior painted in an industrial grey with purple accents. It seemed to have chased the lone vehicle up until the gates before slowly retreating upwards.

Lance blinked, “Wow, they’re a worse driver than me. I didn’t even think that was possible.” The Cuban boy then choked on his next exhale, “Woah, what the hell is that?”

Pidge squinted up at the vessel then perked up, “It’s the ship!” 

“You mean the one in the article? Haha, so there  _ are _ aliens out there!” Hunk exclaimed.

Pidge shoves all his belongings excluding his laptop into his bag, then slings it around his shoulders. “We gotta go check this out!”

The shorter teen made his way down a ladder off the side of the building, Lance quickly followed suit with Hunk behind him. Security had already made its way to where the vehicle was located by the time the trio made it down the ladder. Sirens could be heard in the distance, signalling that the police would also be arriving soon at the scene.

“Shit, we’re not going to be able to get a look at this point.” Lance frowned.

Hunk exaggerated a grimace, “Yeah...yeah, I guess there’s nothing to do but to head back, right?”

Pidge spoke up after working away on a computer, “Wait, guys…I got this feed from a camera they set up in there.”

Hunk and Lance look at Pidge’s display to see...Takashi Shirogane, strapped to a table with some people in white lab suits surrounding him.

The voices picked up by the camera was a melange of static.

“Wh...what are you doing?”

“Calm down, Shiro. We just have to run some tests and quarantine you until further notice. It’s weird for you to have gone off the grid and then return like this.”

“You have to listen to me! These people...they destroy incredible restaurants and leave no traces of the sacred recipes they tear up! Their government is coming!” Shiro struggled against the material lashing him to the bed.

Lanced gasped, “That’s Shiro!  _ The _ Shiro! Winner of the Kerberos competition! That guy’s my hero! Why’s he gotta be tied up like that?” He processed for a millisecond before holding back his laugh, “That’s kin-”

Pidge elbowed him and hissed, “Not now!”

Hunk just continued staring at the footage, “Oh my god...he’s not dead after all.”

Pidge sighed, “Where’s the rest of the Kerberos crew?”

“Do you know how long you were gone?” One of the lab gays asked Shiro.

“Listen, it could’ve been years! I was so fucking stressed I got white hairs, look at this shit!” Shiro hyperventilates before trying to continue in a calmer manner, “The reptilians are coming here for a culinary weapon, they could be here any moment, we have to find Jimmy the Greek!”

“Jimmy the Greek!” Pidge repeated. “That’s the message they keep talking about.”

“It appears they’ve replaced his arm with a cyborg prosthetic, let’s put him under until we know what that thing does.” 

Shiro may as well have been acting like a drug dealer who’s about to get caught, “There’s no time!”

Lance exclaimed, “What? Dude’s a legend and they’re not even gonna listen to him? We have to help him!”

“Uh, but aren’t we watching from the TV because we can’t get past security?” Hunk reasoned.

Pidge’s face lit up, “If we knock out three of the staff members and steal their clothes we can sneak in assassin-style.” He rubbed his hands together and chuckled menacingly.

“No, what we need is a distraction.” Lance retorted.

As if on cue, a large explosion went off somewhere behind the school. They bonded over screaming like manly men. The universe was helping them play their cards right. For once. But Lance knew better.

“Ha, I knew the universe wasn’t about to disappoint me.” He combed through his hair with his hand.

Hunk sighed, “I wish I could go back to bed.”

Pidge pointed at a glowing speck in the distance, “Ah, nevermind that, the universe was helping that guy out.”

Someone was riding in on a kickass scooter plane that Lance imagined one could only buy from the deep web or from a culinary Garrison that doesn’t need that stupid-but-badass implement.

Lance took Pidge’s binoculars to get a closer look and scowled, “Ugh,  _ that  _ guy? Bitch was always trying to one-up me when he was in school, I can’t believe the universe knew that and played me like this. Dis-fucking-loyal.”

Hunk leaned over, “What are you talking about? Everyone knows you guys were gay as hell for each other. And hell is pretty freaking gay, if you ask me.”

Pidge was almost left in the dark, “Who is this?”

“Keith! I’d recognize that mullet anywhere!” Lance artfully ignored Hunk’s remark, “We gotta go!”

Pidge ran after them on his stubbier legs yelling, “Who’s Keith?” Of course, there wouldn’t be a response. As the other two idiots were too busy sliding down the hill trying to look cool.

Cut to inside the quarantine room, the lab assistants were examining something on a nearby device, when the doors opened to reveal Keith in all his glory. Keith decked everyone standing in the room and made his way to Shiro’s side, he pulled down the bandana that covered the lower half of his face to speak.

“Shiro?” Keith cut the material holding the man down as he continued, “I never told you this but I’m gay...it was really inspiring to see you with Adam and I should’ve come out sooner.”

In his subconscious, Shiro heard him despite being out cold and thought,  _ Sis we been knew _ . They’ll never speak of this again.

With Shiro free from his confines, Keith was about to haul him out until Lance, Hunk, and Pidge arrived.

“No, no, no, no. No. NO! I’m saving Shiro.” Lance put Shiro’s other arm over his shoulder.

Keith stared, “Who are you?”

_ This. Forgetful. BITCH _ . Lance screamed inside...only on the inside though, “Lance. You know, your lifelong rival? Keith and Lance, neck and neck.”

Keith continued staring, registering no signs of recognition.

Lance sighed, “We were in the same class at the Garrison.”

“Really? Are you a chef?”

“No, I’m a driver.” 

“Ohhh, I remember, you’re a delivery boy.”

“Not anymore. Thanks to your disciplinary issues, I took your place as a head chef.”

“Congrats.”

After that dull yet somehow tense conversation, Keith and Lance walked Shiro to the scooter plane. When Hunk spotted the guys running back to the lab with hellfire behind them, he and Pidge wisely decided to make their way to the scooter plane as well.

Despite the scooter plane hardly being big enough for all of them, Keith allowed them to hitch a ride. Hunk easily put a torque on the plane’s rear with the sheer weight of the immense love he holds for his friends. After the admittedly startling moment subsided, Keith hit the gas and so began their goosechase.

Under Keith’s instructions, Hunk steered the plane and caused the cars behind them to crash. Based on his driving/piloting, anyone could tell Keith didn’t have enough adult supervision during his expulsion from the Garrison, because he didn’t heed the others’ requests to NOT approach the cliff ahead of them and he did NOT avoid the cliff at all costs and no, he definitely did NOT just drive past the edge of it.

“WHATAREYOUDOINGYOU’REGOINGTOKILLUSALL!” Lance screamed, it was far too early for his beautiful life to end so soon.

“Shut up and trust me! I didn’t get expelled to not be seen as a talented-but-troubled teen!” To be honest, Keith probably allowed the plane to go into freefall and only did something about it at the last minute, further providing evidence on how cool he is.

They soared across the desert and left the cars to bite their dust.

\-----

In the morning of the next, brand new day, the group finds themselves situated at Keith’s cryptic desert shack.

Shiro sighed as he overlooked the expanse of sand, “I’m glad to be back, Keith, but… This is all so weird, how did you know to find me?”

“Come inside, I’ll show you.”

With everyone gathered around Keith’s also-cryptic corkboard of conspiracies, he explained his findings.

“After getting sacked from the Garrison, I sort of wandered and found myself drawn to this place. I couldn’t explain it until I found the source of the energy here.” Keith tapped a section of a map furiously circled and singled out. ‘ENERGY SOURCE’ was written in the circle accompanied by three points that were labelled ‘TRIANGULAR - ILLUMINATI LOL’.

“It’s a cave surrounded by boulders and covered in… Ancient markings?” The images illustrated the creators of the markings to be very fond of lions. “Each tells a variation of the story about a blue lion, but they all have clues leading to the same event that was set to happen yesterday. Then Shiro showed up, which is great because I need some parental supervision to keep me from diving into conspiracies like this.”

Shiro smiled sympathetically, “What about Mothman?”

Keith sighed, “Mothman’s the only reason I don’t need therapy yet.”

Shiro nodded before turning to the others, “Also, I should thank you guys for helping me out of there.”

Lance totally did not just give his hero Takashi Shirogane the stiffest handshake ever when he realized Shiro remembered his name from last night’s laboratory bust. He was almost envious of Pidge’s cool with introducing himself and Hunk.

Then the gremlin had the willpower to keep communication going! Incredible.

“Did anyone else from your crew make it out?”

“I’m not sure, I only remember the capture. Everything else comes to me in bits and pieces. I sure hope they’re alright, though.”

Hunk nervously interjects, “A-about the aliens… Where are they now? Oh my god we’re gonna die, aren’t we?”

Shiro laughed, “Ah, well...they’re not exactly alien but they are foreign. There’s something else, too. I recall ‘Jimmy the Greek’. I know the name is out of place, but I believe it’s some kind of weapon they’re looking for. We have to find it before they do.”

Lance grimaced, “Dude… There’s probably hundreds of Jimmy the Greek chains in this country and we have to single out  _ one _ with some sort of secret weapon?”

Hunk chimed in, “Oh! I was looking through Pidge’s diary, first off, he has a girlfriend, what’s up with that right? Second, there’s a series of numbers he wrote down from when he intercepted signals from Russia.” He ignored Pidge’s gremlin noises of protest as he talked about some very scientific stuff. He brought out a graph of some wavelength and Keith eagerly snatched it out of his hands to compare it to an image he had on his corkboard of fear.

Due to Hunk and Pidge’s convenient interests and excellence in science, they were able to build a machine to sniff out the blue lion once and for all. The buzzing and static was pretty severe, though.

Keith showed them the cave of lion carvings and Lance took the liberty of dusting off the surface of one with his hand. His bare hand, what an absolute unit. The carvings glowed ominously, the floor crumbled from underneath them, and the group fell down screaming like little bitches.

Hunk cried, “THERE’S A JIMMY THE GREEK PLACE DOWN HERE? IS THAT WHAT I’M SUPPOSED TO BE GETTING FROM THIS?”

Whether it was a Jimmy the Greek place or not, there was a pool of water where they landed, so it probably wasn’t. Instead they were met face to face with a giant blue lion with a force field keeping it from getting dusty.

“Is that the Jimmy the Greek weapon?” Pidge asked.

“Well it has to be, but it’d be nice if there was also a Jimmy the Greek place in there,” Shiro mused.

Whatever it was, the lion was radiant as the blue forcefield gave it a bigger aura than anything has the right to be surrounded by. Of course it was special.

Lance bobbed around as they moved towards it, “Anyone else getting the feeling that it’s staring at us?”

“No?” Lance will quote Shiro’s response later.

Keith pressed his hands against the shield, “I wonder how we get in.”

Lance lazily strolled up beside him, “Maybe you just have to knock.”

Lance meant it ironically, he did not intend for his advice to actually work. The forcefield faded but the lion only seemed to glow even more without it, the floor underneath it also glowed and Lance swore he started tripping.

He saw five forms with distinct coloured tails flying. FLYING. Like Keith’s scooter plane and they effortlessly merged together into an amalgamation of metal. Lance didn’t remember taking drugs earlier.

“Did everyone else just see that?”

Hunk exclaimed, “Jimmy the Greek is not just a food place! It’s a secret weapon shaped like a furry!”

“If this is just one piece of it, where are the others?” Pidge wondered.

After a brief session of compliments, the blue lion’s head dipped down to meet them. “ _ Get in shitheads, we’re going shopping _ ,” A strange voice boomed from inside the mouth and stairs unfurled for them to get in.

Trying to ignore what was just uttered, Lance hopped onboard directly into the cockpit. Everyone else hesitantly crammed into the remaining space around him, the displays pulled up for driving/piloting were uncomfortably high-tech. Lance snapped out of his confusion when he heard purring.

“Woah, did you guys just hear that?”

“Hear what?” Never trust Keith to answer vague-ass questions.

“I think she’s talking to me.”

Indeed, she was. The blue lion’s regal voice could be heard in Lance’s head. “ _ I’ve only held this boy for one second, but if anything happened to him, I would kill everyone in this room and then myself. _ ”

_ Alright, Rosa, that’s a bit extreme, thank you _ . Lance thought absentmindedly.

“ _ Just fuckin’ pilot this shit. This planet’s memes are infuriatingly contagious. _ ”

With a press of a button, the lion roars aggressively.

Lance smirked, “Alright, I know how piloting works. It’s like driving but up.”

Lance was not the best pilot. He wasn’t even the best driver. But the lion was a boss ass bitch, ain’t no son of hers gonna be a bad pilot right now. Besides, the kid never even piloted an aerial vehicle before, so it was understandable. She would have to take some control for now and Lance would have to learn more later.

For now, the blue lion was ready to wreck shit. Shit being the rocks around the cave as she emerged from the underground. Delicious. Finally, some good fucking air. In her happiness, the lion did some cool somersaults before running across the desert plains (lol) and then shooting up into the sky.

The current inhabitants of the space in her head, however, considered the experience rickety at best.

Keith shouted over the queasy groaning of Hunk, “You’re the worst pilot ever! Where are you going?!”

Lance grinned, “I’m not making her do anything! It’s like she’s on autopilot!” His smile wavered, “Also, she’s saying there’s an enemy ship ahead. Oh! And we’re in Russian skies.”

Before anyone could say anything beyond a collective ‘WHAT’, the enemy ship loomed menacingly in the not-so-far-distance. It had the same flag from one of Pidge’s articles painted on its hull.

Hunk sweats, “Um, can we turn this thing around?”

Lance did not get a chance to consider before the trigger-happy assholes of the other ship started shooting. “WOAH HANG ON!” Lance shoved a stick and the blue lion fired a blue (obviously) beam. He ended off the ship in a very anticlimactic swing.

From inside the cryptic ship, a reptilian was speaking calmly over intercoms despite the circumstances, “Lord Zarkon, the thiccie and his people found the lion. It attacked us and is heading away from Russia.”

Zarkon’s voice was crisp and clear, “DO NOT call the prisoner that and follow the lion, alert all ships in the area to intercept. It appears there’s finally a purposeful battle for us to attend to.”

After a few seconds of getting chased, the lion suggested they dive into the ocean to escape. They listen to the lion since she probably knows more than they do. Everyone groaned uncomfortably as the lion went through several layers of water.

“I don’t recognize any of the sea creatures here. We must be at the bottom of the ocean floor.” Shiro thought out loud.

Pidge narrowed his eyes, “Wouldn’t we have gotten crushed earlier if we were that deep?”

Lance gasped, “Pidge, we are in a fucking metal blue lion with the capability of destroying a giant ship from the Russian mafia a few times bigger and the lion speaks to me in memes! Have some faith.”

They continued swimming along and resurfaced along the coast of god-knows-where, they were moving way too quickly for any of them to recognize anything.

Hunk groaned after a quick vomit session, “Anyone else having second thoughts about diving into the ocean? Why are we even listening to a lion that speaks in memes?!”

The group of angsty teenagers erupted into a minor argument until Shiro had to cut it down, “We have to work through this together. Lance, do you know where we are?”

“No, the lion stopped speaking to me. But hey, there’s a huge Jimmy the Greek place up ahead, and I mean, HUGE.”

Upon landing, Shiro suggested they stay alert just in case the fucking Jimmy the Greek staff decided to get involved in a kidnapping as well, which is quickly forgotten when the blue lion roars a command for the doors to open. As expected, this particular Jimmy the Greek was also inexplicably high-tech.

“ _ Open sesame, bitches! _ ” The giant doors rumbled open. This may as well be a B&E, since the place seemed to heed the existence of closing hours despite the fact that it looked like a mad scientist built it and also the evident fact that it was daytime.

But young, rumbling stomachs said ‘fuck it’ and they may as well chance death for some good fucking food.

The restaurant’s interior was much more extensive than even a casino has any right to be. That’s how unnecessarily big it was, but at least it was spacious. However, there wasn’t a single soul that seemed to inhabit said space. The group had to wander around to find a kitchen or another person, whichever one happens first. Hunk was even adding to the mystery by occasionally calling out an eerie, echoing ‘Hello’. No one had the heart to tell him that it was time to stop.

The group stumbled into the biggest staffroom they’ve ever seen before finding even a kitchen or person. It took them a solid twenty minutes to take a simple glance at every part of the room. Though for management of a chain this big, it would’ve been ideal for the staffroom to be so enormous. There’s a circle of weird blue and white closet-looking things tucked away in one corner of the mini-labyrinth they were exploring, very inviting for rituals and other family get-togethers. Let’s go there in particular, said no one ever in normal circumstances.

But nothing about this was normal anyway, they may as well check it out. As the group drifted around the circumference of the dresser-circle, their presence caused the glassy portion of two of them to glow. Everyone groaned in their heads, because there’s no telling what would come out of there at this point, they’ve already gone through security that was, once again, unnecessary for something like a Jimmy the Greek. Unless there really was something like a mad scientist hiding around like literally all the signs are pointing to.

Back to the closet-pod things, though, they glowed until the glass receded completely like the hairline of a middle-aged man.

An undeniably beautiful young woman inside opened her eyes and shouted, “Father!” She fell forward to reach out before Lance hastily caught her. Lance blushed immediately when she looked up at him.

For reasons no one could explain, the girl spoke with a British accent when nowhere in Britain could possibly have a Jimmy the Greek, let alone a Jimmy the Greek this nice. “Who are you? Where am I?”

“I’m Lance, and you’re right here in my arms.”

The girl shot him down completely, “Your ears are hideous. What’s wrong with them?” Her ears were indeed different, pointed like an elf’s, but other than that and the pink Nike logo markings on her cheekbones, she was pretty much human and therefore not exempt from being incredibly rude in human standards.

Lance recoiled, “There’s nothing wrong with them! They heard exactly what you said about them!”

This was turning into an awfully provoking exchange. Definitely not Lance’s best, romantically-speaking, as interested girls usually don’t force you to your knees by one hideous ear alone.

With Lance groaning on the floor, the girl addressed the fake bitches that didn’t step up to save him from a bad end, “Who are you? Where is the manager? What are you doing in the staffroom?”

Lance continued struggling under the firm hold of his ear, “We just came in on the blue lion! We don’t know anything!”

“ _ Why _ do you have the Blue Lion? What happened to its paladin? What is your reason to be here?” The girl gasped, “Oh my god, what century is it?”

Shiro, bless his dad heart, responded, “What are you talking about? Can you tell us who you are? Maybe we could help.”

“I am Allura, daughter of Manager Alfor.” Allura finally lets go of Lance’s ear, “I’ve got to find out how long we’ve been asleep, and where we are.” She walks up to a white podium and places her hands on it, bringing up a blue display. Perhaps the high-tech stuff wasn’t too out of place, it followed the same blue and white theme as some Jimmy the Greek chains. That mad scientist had a good eye for aesthetics.

“Oh, that’s how that works…” Pidge sounded strangely disappointed that it wasn’t more complicated.

While Allura was working away at the futuristic computer, the second closet’s glass receded to show a man with a stunning ginger mustache. His Nike logo markings were blue, but he had the same pointed ears as Allura. His serious demeanor was immediately wiped from his face as he leaped out of the closet to attempt a flying kick on Lance.

“Woah! As the locals here say, FUCK! You’re lucky I have the case of pins and needles, otherwise, I’d have you in a chokehold in an instant!”

“Aw come on!” Lance wheezed, “Why am I the one getting all the abuse?”

Keith pointed at the closets half-heartedly, “You  _ are _ the one invading their personal space the most, after all…”

“Shut up, bitchbaby!”

The ginger man’s face lit up, “Now that’s a colourful one! I’ll add bitchbaby to my repertoire.”

Meanwhile, Allura’s face fell under the soft light emanating from her display, “It can’t be…”

Her friend looked in her direction, “What is it?”

“We’ve been asleep for three hundred years.”

Lance blinked, “That’s the worst coma I’ve ever heard of.”

Allura remembered that terrible day far too well. Zarkon had destroyed all of their food trucks, leaving the manager with likely a dozen dilemmas while he was at it. Anyone would confuse his white hair colour for the stress at that point, but his bomb ass grandpa look? All natural.

_ I’ve destroyed your fleet, Alfor. I will be there shortly to claim Jimmy the Greek’s weapon _ . Zarkon’s gruff voice had spoken long ago. He didn’t seem to understand that you don’t call a squad of food trucks a fleet, but fuck, Allura wasn’t going to correct him then.

_ Father, we must unite Jimmy the Greek’s lions and fight before it’s too late! _

Alfor was cautious, he couldn’t risk anything the way a teenager could.  _ It’s already too late, we must send them away. We can’t let them fall into Zarkon’s hands _ .

_ We can’t give up like that! _

_ I’m sorry, daughter. _ Alfor had approached her then, and placed a hand on her cheek,  _ If all goes well, then we’ll see each other again soon. _

Though they had taken this post on Earth, Alfor freely used his magic to put her into a slumber.

_ Father… _

_ I love you _ . Those had been the last words she heard before everything fell to darkness.

Allura came back to the present with a face full of horror at the memory, “Fucking hell, Father… I’m not ready to be a manager.”

She addressed the group around her, “They destroyed most of the Jimmy the Greek chains in the world, no one would remember those spots after three hundred years. Coran,” She looked at the ginger-haired man, “Alfor is gone, so much of what we worked so hard to build…”

Shiro turned to Lance, “I thought you said there were hundreds in America?”

“Uh, I’m particularly fond of exaggerations?” Lance laughed sheepishly. “Most of them left are probably in Canada, the aliens wouldn’t remember to look there.”

Allura gasped at the idea, “I personally don’t know what goes on up there, but the Galra would be terrified of heading into  _ that _ territory!”

“Say what now?”

“The Galra, that’s the mafia gang that we’ve been fighting against for so long. Years beyond any sacred monument on your planet here. They wouldn’t go there, even for the sake of destroying things. I’m not sure why.”

Hunk laughed nervously then, “Woah, you’re really talking like an alien there, Allura. What’s this about this battle being  _ older _ than even  _ pyramids _ ?”

Coran stared at him, “Well, we  _ are _ aliens. You didn’t think we were from here, did you? These markings and ears aren’t just for show, you know.”

“Um, n-no…” Honestly? They all thought these two were just weird.

Shiro sighed, “I remember now, they’re led by Zarkon, right?”

Allura muttered, “I fucking hate that piece of shit gum-stuck-under-my-shoe…”

Coran jumped, “Language, Allura! We can’t have the manager of Jimmy the Greek use such vulgar mannerisms!” Though he seemed impressed with her colourful vocabulary. It seems he does not realise that she had gotten it from him in the first place.

Shiro continued, “I was his prisoner, he’s searching for a super weapon held by Jimmy the Greek. To think that everything was true…”

“He’s still alive? That’s impossible! There’s no way we have immortality under our belts yet,” Allura said.

Pidge cut in, “Yet?”

They all ignored him.

“He’s searching for it because he knows it’s the only thing that can defeat him, and that’s exactly why we have to find it before him,” Allura reasoned.

“Okay, so if I were a giant ass lion robot, where would I be?” Keith wondered.

\-----

In a dank room filled with purple crystal-looking shit, an older woman yelled in her circle of ‘alone time’. She snorted a line before approaching a figure so obviously important that even a high person would recognize it as Zarkon.

“The Blue Lion has returned, and now I feel a resurgence of Altean energy.”

“That was the cocaine you inhaled, Haggar.”

“Quiet! Cocaine, as the humans call it, is the exact same here and on Altea, they have a very ingenious way of consuming it, but I know what I felt. It was real.”

“Alfor’s daughter lives? How? I thought I killed her when I stole her favourite enchilada three-hundred-one years ago.”

“I know not, but it is time to reclaim what is rightfully ours. We must take back Jimmy the Greek.”

In Sendak’s ship, he heard Zarkon’s voice over their high-quality intercoms, seriously, what a deal, no static and accessible to all? A must-buy.

“Sendak get your bitch ass over here we got some tea to spill.” There was the faint sound of someone snorting something.

Zarkon continued, “Princess Allura is alive and hiding near your post, we believe that she alone knows where the remaining lions are. Retrieve her and the lions. With them, the Galra will be unstoppable.”

“I fight and conquer for the Galra,  _ vrepit sa _ !” They were making an awfully big deal over fucking food trucks. Sendak didn’t say this out loud though, otherwise to keep things PG over the intercoms for baby Galra, he’d have to censor himself with an airhorn.

Zarkon signed off without even a goodbye or an ‘I love you’ or a ‘be home by supper’, the prick.

This did not phase Sendak, the Galra all knew Zarkon wasn’t the most loving of mothers. Sendak gave a command to the driver of his small ship, “Set a course for Lesbos.”

\-----

After settling that Coran and Allura were both alive and well despite the longest coma ever, they would discuss how to search for the four other lions.

“Come on, Allura, it’s been three hundred years, you have to eat something. We didn’t come all the way here for you to reject even the initial goal.” Coran tried to coax her.

“I’m not hungry, I’ll eat later.”

“Jeez, three hundred years, that’s like, thirty plus ten.” Lance remarked.

Keith stared at him incredulously, “It’s...times ten.”

“I’m not taking math advice from a dropout, I know three hundred is ten times thirty I was making a meme.”

“Well how’s it feel being the worst shitposter ever, huh? Your mother probably bought you mega bloks instead of legos.”

“Youfuckingtakethatbackrightnowyouunculturedpieceoftrash.” Lance seethed all in one breath.

Everyone ignored this, it was all a part of the coping process for gays in particular. Hunk rubbed his belly, “Well, I haven’t eaten since breakfast and I’m already hungry.”

“You did throw up three times on the way here, how about we head on over to the kitchen and get ourselves a snack,” Pidge suggested.

“Ehh, you’re right.” Hunk promptly began shoving a plate off Jimmy the Greek’s menu into his mouth. Apparently, the food did not taste good despite it looking alright and being from a restaurant.

Coran laughed, “Sorry, the food’s probably not in best condition. Our refrigerators are good, but not THAT good. Three hundred years is not a time interval they were made for.”

Hunk sighed, “That’s okay, you did what you could. At least we know how good the fridges are.”

“Sorry guys, I finished all my hot pockets back at Kerberos,” Shiro winced, “It’s incredible you guys had such advanced technology three hundred years ago. Why did you come here of all places?”

“Well, the Galra destroyed our planet Altea, and we may be the only Alteans left. The Galra always thought it was a stupid thing for happiness to be brought from something simple like food. On Altea, that shit didn’t matter. The heart wants what the heart wants. So, after the Galra’s petty ass move, we decided to continue our lifelong goal of sharing that happiness, and now we’re here. But out of pettiness, the Galra followed us here in the form of a mafia gang to destroy us, they didn’t even come up with a creative name.” Coran’s passionate infodump became a series of grumbles.

Shiro blinked, “Oh, wow, yeah. I’m glad we still have a chance against them, then.”

“Would you look at that, maybe we’re not the only ones after all, Coran.” Allura pointed over to the sleeping pod she came out of where four tiny mice made their way over to her. They squealed with joy at the sight of the princess. Each of them carrying their own individuality. “Aw, I would die for them.” Allura gushed, clapping her hands together.

Coran squinted his eyes, “ Princess Allura, I love you; but, you dumb as hell. Those rats are probably grungy after being stuck in a pod for three hundred years. You don’t want none of that.” he reasoned.

“Excuse  _ you _ , but since these  _ mice _ lived in the same pod with me for so long our consciousness seems to have been hitched together. So, of course I would feel a connection to them.” Allura huffed, crossing her arms. The mice mirrored her stance, all of them stood in a line with a soft hint of disdain displayed in their faces.

The mice started squeaking rhythmically, it even sounded like one of them started beatboxing on the spot. Allura stared in awe, “Holy shit they’re dissing you, Coran.”

“What? What are they saying about me?” Coran was distraught.

The other Altean adjusted her throat and began to speak in a deeper voice, “My rhymes are so cold, I’m from the North Pole. This stupid dorito over here acting like he’s got polio.”

Keith made an air horn noise with his mouth, it was actually kind of terrifying. His mouth had just gaped a little as the sound left his throat. (cryptids: after dark)

Lance widened his eyes at him, “How the everloving fuck did you do that?”

Keith boredly stared back at him, “I’m a better memer than you, bitch. I was destined to be, I could always do this.”

The mice were still going, and so was Allura. “ Now I ain’t trash-talking, I’m talking to trash. You can shut your mouth boy, and kiss my ass-”

Before the mice could continue with their roasts, the alarms blared from Allura’s podium.

Coran was sobbing as he said, “A Galra battleship has set it’s tracker on us!”

Allura shrieked, “How did they find us?!”

Lance gave Keith the side-eye, “They probably heard Keith’s horrendous impression of an air horn.”

Keith narrowed his eyes, “Whatever you have to say to make yourself feel better about your abilities, especially after launching us into the ocean!”

“I’LL LAUNCH YOU INTO THE OCEAN!”

Shiro shoved them apart, “Can it, chefs! You can’t just let your dysfunctional gay out like that, it’s time to work as a team. How long until they get here?”

“Oh, fuck, uh, let’s see,” Coran did the math on his fingers, “Well, we are hidden well enough so uh, a few days?”

“Well, by the time they get here, we’ll amass all of Jimmy the Greek’s strength. Together, we will destroy them!” They could almost imagine Allura’s eyes going pitch black, add that to the weird strengths of the team, under Keith being the airhorn machine.

“Allura, there’s five of the lions, how are we finding the rest?”

Allura made her way to a raised circle on the floor, “Me, bitch.”

A map with every geological feature imaginable shot out of the floor from underneath her.

Lance sighed, “I don’t know man, at this point I feel like I’m still tripping and we’re all still stuck in some dank ass cave right now…”

Pidge ignored him, “There’s coordinates for them?” He paused to look at every feature spinning around him, “It looks like the Black Lion’s in the same place as the Blue Lion.”

Coran nodded, “To keep the Black Lion safe from Zarkon we locked it inside of the building. Once the other four lions are present, it can only be freed then.”

“As you may have seen earlier, the lions choose their pilots. It’s a special bond that absolutely cannot be forced. The name you’re familiar with slips my memory, but the quintessence the lion and pilot hold are mirrored…” Allura began to explain.

Coran whispered in her ear, recollection registered on Allura’s face.

“The lion and pilot’s cocaine are mirrored. They form something greater than science can explain.”

Lance raised his hand, “Uh… Sorry to burst your bubble, but cocaine is just a drug over here. No way we’d have that in our system and be accepted into a culinary Garrison.”

Coran shook his head, “Young one, there is still much that your planet doesn’t know. Last I remember, there’s nothing that can detect the slight traces of cocaine in every one of us, but such small amounts don’t hurt. In fact, it makes us stronger in more ways than one.”

No one had the will to argue with an alien about cocaine, they did just witness the capabilities of the Alteans’ three-hundred-year-old fridge. Allura brought everyone back to the topic of the lions, she spun the map to emphasize her points like a holographic powerpoint.

“The Black Lion is the head of the weapon’s final form, we call it Jimmy for simplicity, its pilot is in control at all times and a natural leader, someone who everyone will follow with no hesitation. Shiro,” She sifted the Black Lion’s hologram to him, “You will pilot the Black Lion.

Allura seemed to have gotten tired at some point, “The Green Lion is inquisitive and needs an intellectual and daring pilot. Pidge, you will pilot the Green Lion. The Bl-”

Lance nodded sagely, “We know: takes the best and prettiest pilot of the bunch.”

“Bitch, if that were true, I’d be its pilot. Step off. The Yellow Lion is caring and kind, its pilot puts the needs of others above his own. You know what’s good, Hunk will be the Yellow Lion’s pilot. You will be a leg, you’ll uplift and hold the team together. The Red Lion is temperamental and the hardest to master, it’s the most agile, but also the most unstable in every sense of the word. The pilot will have to rely on instincts more than skill. Keith, because you came straight out of myspace, you’ll be the pilot of the Red Lion.”

Lance knit his brows, “What? Allura, girl, have you seen my content? I’m surprised I haven’t felt the angst from all of it yet.”

Allura continued with a dainty vein popping in her neck, “Sadly, I can’t locate the Red Lion’s coordinates yet, after three hundred years, there might be something wrong with the castle...Building.”

The lions’ holograms roared and bounded upwards with Allura’s voiceover, “Once all the lions are united, you will form Jimmy, the most powerful chef ever known, defender against the Galra.” Jimmy’s faint outline disappeared entirely, and the lights were back on like after a movie at the theatre.

Hunk broke the following silence, “Okay, so we, teenagers who’ve never piloted a plane before, will be flying giant metal lions, got that part, but how, exactly, do we become a giant metal Jimmy? Also, how long will this take? Cause I gotta pee, do you people pee?”

Shiro took his role of leader as a natural, “We have time,  **but not much** . Pidge and I’ll go find the Green Lion, Lance, you go with Hunk to get the Yellow Lion. Keith, you wait here until you locate the Red Lion.”

“I’ll get the restaurant’s defenses ready,” Allura added.

“I’ll ready a truck and load the coordinate so you can reach the Green Lion. Go into the ocean if you have to, there’ll be an underwater setting,” Coran also added.

Everyone was garnished and ready to go, except Keith because he was spicy enough as is. Lance would have to be the one chef too many and fuck up that broth later.

\-----

Pidge and Shiro’s truck had somehow traversed enough ocean quick enough to land them in a rainforest in South America. Shiro turned off the radio that had been blasting Pitbull’s  _ Mr Worldwide  _ in order to really take in the surroundings. The luscious green forest seemed to go on for miles, the bright sun glared into their eyes. They quickly looked away to the nearby river where a sloth-like creature sat in a small boat. It used one finger to beckon the two over, Pidge and Shiro shared a quick glance at each other. Shiro mouthed a  _ what the fuck _ before heading over. They hesitantly boarded the boat, and without even waiting for them to settle down the sloth began rowing at mach speed down the riverbank. Pidge almost flew straight out of the boat, but Shiro grabbed onto his arm and pulled Pidge back in. They held on the sides of the boat with white knuckles, Pidge screamed, “What the fuck!” But the sloth didn’t care, the sloth didn’t give a shit. Once they had arrived at their alleged destination, Pidge and Shiro were more than relieved to escape from the sloth. Shiro waddled over to a nearby bush and lurched into it, Pidge dramatically collapsed on the floor. The sloth disappeared soon after the two had gotten out, this time at a much more reasonable pace. Shiro and Pidge finally composed themselves enough in order to make their way to an aged staircase. What lay ahead of the staircase appeared to be a structure of tree branches overlapping each other in a globe shape. As they approached streaks of fluorescent green emerged sporadically across the stairs. Pidge stared in awe for a couple seconds before turning to look over his shoulder at Shiro. 

“Go. Be great and shit.” The older man smiled weakly before spinning around to throw up once again.

Pidge shuddered at the sight, then bolted up the wide steps. He didn’t waste any time climbing up the intricate series of branches, and at the top he looked down into the huge crater in the framework. It glowed the same green from the stairs; but, despite how much it hurt to stare, Pidge couldn’t take his eyes off of it. From below, he could hear the roar of a lion and he knew right away that he had made it. Pidge let out his own roar of excitement before leaping into the hole. Shiro had been watching the whole time as he rested on a slab of stone, and he watched as a green lion materialized in front of him with wide eyes.

\----- 

On Lance and Hunk’s side, things weren’t looking too hot, but god help Lance if he was ever going to admit that he needed Keith there to spice things up, that weird-ass airhorn soup. No homo tho.

Lance was too busy screaming to enjoy how nicely the Blue Lion soared through the air under his piloting, Hunk is going to vomit soon, and they look exactly like one of those historical memes that were blurred for the effect of urgency. Alarms blared like insistent, nagging chatter as two ships with the Galra’s flag and insignia chased them and tried to shoot them down. So all in all, a normal scenario.

It was all fun and games until they brought out the goddamn missiles, and the Blue Lion was shot down by one, of course.

Their screaming continued as they fell down a dank chasm, Hunk yelled over Lance’s screams, “I thought Coran told us these areas were peaceful!”

“Maybe the phrase he used means ‘I’m a bitch-ass  _ liar _ ’ in Altean!” Lance pulls back some levers and the Blue Lion rights itself to continue flying across vacant desert.

There’s more Galra shitheads shooting at them from a crevice up ahead. As Lance took fucking large rickety steps to avoid the laser bullets, Hunk grabbed onto a handlebar available in the cockpit just like in cars for moms to grab onto when you exceed one kilometer past the speed limit. But they’re in the sky, so they’re above the law.

Hunk whipped out a device Coran gave him, “Okay, according to the coordinates, we’re right on top of the Yellow Lion, it’s right there, we’re they’re mining for stuff.”

“They don’t even know the lion is there.”

“Or maybe they just got here and now they’re digging.”

“Okay, I’m dropping you down there.”

Hunk began to sweat more, “Me? Down there? No, no. No no no. No no no no no no no no no no n-”

“YES! I’LL COVER YOU!” The Blue Lion proceeded to prance all the Galra shitheads to death, an ideal Saturday morning.

Hunk did what any teenager with anxiety would, he started to go through a list of all possible, worse-case scenarios, “What if it doesn’t work? What if it doesn’t accept me as its pilot? What if I start crying?!” Too late, he was already crying.

“What? A badass lion not accepting  _ you _ ? I’ve never heard of faker news in my life! Go get em, champ!” Hunk was totally reassured as he watched Lance press the eject button.

The Blue Lion projectile-vomited out Hunk and he rolled along the dusty ground like a bowling ball, only coming to a stop when he hit a Dwayne (a rock)  Johnson. The remaining Galra shitheads tried to shoot immediately, but the Blue Lion blocked them with her face. Hunk rushed into a dubious cavern entrance.

He approached a little electrical box along the ground and began working with the wires, all while muttering about how this scenario made total, complete sense, and how it was totally worth skipping a few days or years of school. The gunfire didn’t let up, obviously.

Hunk started up a minecart and rolled along at an uncomfortably leisurely pace, yellow carvings glowed on the ceiling above him. He was destined to pilot this lion.  _ Cool _ . He thought eloquently.

The cart didn’t even come to its full rickety stop before Hunk rushed out to meet an archaic-looking stone door. The doors immediately opened up to him, unleashing hundreds of whispers that he thought contained dreams and stories that never saw the daylight. A large carving of a lion shone on the ground, commanding Hunk’s attention. Two more glowed yellow, creating what looked like a pathway, the third one was like an aesthetically-pleasing target. The cave rumbled from the fight outside, Hunk paid that no mind.

He tinkered with one of the Galra’s drills to burrow in the middle of the yellow target, the absolute genius. Hunk drilled until he was in the expanse of another cavernous room, face to face with the sturdy Yellow Lion, complete with its own yellow aura of a forcefield. Its yellow eyes blinked on to acknowledge him.

Lance continued evading the Galra outside, they had fire and hell in their arsenal when he just had water! Coran’s got to consider employing some of hell for Jimmy’s use.

Lance thought he was doing alright until the ship he launched ricocheted into the cave entrance.  _ FUCK _ .

Well, he would just have to continue beating up these aliens until Hunk reemerged with the lion. That was fine, until one of the aliens shot him down, and as he took the tumble from the sky, his Gen Z brain told him that he must have looked exactly like that one panicked Mr. Krabs meme.  _ Yo that’s fucking wild lmao _ . One of the internal Lances spoke, what pissed off external Lance was how he pronounced lmao. That Lance was shot on the spot, no internal dialogues of his was about to pronounce lmao wrong, he would expect Keith to do that, not one of his own. Then the Blue Lion finally hit the ground.

Luckily, the Yellow Lion emerged to save Lance from anymore of the bloodbaths he was drowning in. Like someone in a cliche action flick, Hunk took the goddamn bullets. Except they were not bullets, but fucking missiles. Again.

Unphased, the Yellow Lion body slammed three ships at once.

Allura appeared on a display in the lions, “Paladins! Hurry back, the tides rose while you were gone and there’s a sick crab party out here! You can’t miss it!” Her face disappeared after Coran’s shout of ‘Allura get the camera! They’re re-enacting the French revolution!’

Lance’s inner child screamed, “HUNK WE HAVE TO GO RIGHT NOW, FUCK THESE GUYS!”

The lions flew to the nearest coast and crashed into the ocean to hurry back to the heart of Jimmy the Greek. It was smooth sailing for Lance, but Hunk got shot at a few times, causing severe water-based turbulence.

“Eugh...Lance, I’m getting a really bad case of the butterflies. It’s uncomfortable and nothing good’s bound to come out of this. 0/10, worst possible case of the butterflies.”

Lance imparted insightful advice, “DIGEST THOSE MOTHERFUCKING BUTTERFLIES WE ARE  _ NOT _ MISSING PARTY CRABS BECAUSE THESE ALIEN DICKS HATE GRANDMA’S SECRET APPLE PIE RECIPE FOR EXISTING. LET’S. GO.”

\-----

Allura turned to see Hunk and Lance stroll through the doors, “You made it, how were the crabs?”

Lance sighed, “Very hungover. They were just partying minutes ago when you told us but now they’re lying around on the sand like a sleepy mob.”

Pidge held up a Canon camera (#notspons), “Don’t worry about that, we got some good footage you could look back at later.”

“Aw, but that’s not the same as  _ being _ there, you know? Whatever, there’s always next tide.”

“Nice.” Hunk high-fived Lance.

Shiro smiled, “Did we find the Red Lion yet?”

“Actually, Allura just found it!” Coran twiddled his mustache, “Good news and bad news. Good news is: it’s nearby. Bad news is: it’s on the ship floating around Lesbos. Oh, more good news:  _ we’re _ Lesbos!”

Shiro made a sound like the lady with the Valentino white bag, “They’re here already?”

“Yes, I suppose my calculations were a bit off. Finger counting is more an art than a science. I met Beethoven, he’d know.”

On cue, a large wall of a window flickered to show a reptilian who promptly began to speak, “Princess Allura, this is Commander Sendak of the Galra. I speak on behalf of Lord Zarkon, King of the Reptilians and Mammalians. I am here to confiscate the lions. Hand them over, or I will destroy your island.”

Shiro clenched his fists, “Okay, team. Let’s not panic.”

Hunk raised his hands, “Not panic? The scary mafia alien thing is driving his airship towards us, he’s gonna destroy a small Greek island, we only have four lions-”

Pidge interjected, “Three functional ones.”

“Ah, right, thank you Pidge.” Hunk pat the green gremlin’s head, “ _ Three _ functional lions, and a restaurant the size of a castle that’s like, three hundred years old.”

Coran corrected him, “Actually, it’s nine hundred years old, my grandpappy built this restaurant w-”

Hunk placed a finger on Coran’s face, “ _ Thanks _ Coran. Thank you. You see? This is the perfect opportunity to panic!”

Allura enjoyed her fair share of drama, so she only decided to speak now, “Well, this castle has a particle barrier we can activate.”

Lance grinned, “I have no idea what that means anymore but no need, because you’ve already activated my-”

Shiro had the reflexes of a mom, “Lance!”

Upon analyzing data on the Galra ship waiting for them right now, Coran concluded that the particle barrier wouldn’t be able to last for long against their ion cannon...whatever that means, the squad were chefs, not scientists.

“Panic now?” Hunk asked.

“ _ No _ . We just need to figure out our plan of action, and quickly,” Shiro glanced around for ideas.

“Let’s pop into the ocean and live to fight another day.” Lance suggested.

“Yes! I second that.” In his anxiety, Hunk held up two fingers, “We only have three lions, can’t form Jimmy. Oh, but we could make a worm and dive through the ocean like that,” Hunk added.

“It’s settled then! Allura, you ride with me. Someone take the old dude.” Coran sizzled like a hot frypan at Lance’s comment.

It didn’t last, though, Pidge shot them down, “We can’t just abandon Lesbos! The Galra will keep destroying shit and capturing people until we stop them.”

“Okay, we could still do Lance’s idea and get them to chase after us as we slither away from this island!”

Keith chimed in, “Sendak would destroy the planet then come after us anyway. Staying is the only option.”

Lance made a zipping motion with his fingers, “Here’s another option: shut your fuck!”

Allura and Coran gasped at such an open expression of the word.

“I find it almost miraculous that you can use one of the more well-known words of the English lexicon incorrectly, especially considering the English language’s place as a lingua franca where people of different first languages would learn it for international discussion. Get your shit together, Lance.” It was absolutely unnecessary for Keith to body Lance like that, but alas, it is what it’s come to.

Lance ignored the seemingly accurate information on the English language, “What do you know, English Major with a Mullet?”

“We’re staying, nineteenth-century commoner.”

“Leaving!”

Pidge and Hunk jumped in.

“Staying!”

“Snake!”

No one would ever know that Hunk was talking about an actual snake that somehow got in, because Allura quickly yote it out the window into some soft foliage.

“Kids, stop!” Shiro breathed sharply, “Allura, you know the lions and the Galra, what do you think is the best course of action?”

“I...I don’t know.” Allura just got back from yeeting the snake, she didn’t know what was going on.

“Perhaps your father can help,” Coran said.

“My father?”

Coran and Allura took a brief break from the discussion to enter a dark room, where the previous manager’s memories were stored in a computer. Allura approached a small blue orb upon a dimly lit stage. She reached out to touch it, and it exploded at her touch.

Allura was then surrounded by a beautiful springtime mountainside. Her and Coran’s homeplanet, Altea. The grass was green and lush enough to sleep in, delicate pink blooms dotted the canvas of green. The skies couldn’t be bluer, and clouds clung to the vast swaths of mountain like cotton crowns and diadems.

It’s been centuries since Allura’s last seen this place. A tall white-haired man in regal armour appeared from the computer left in the grass.

“Father!”

“Allura, my only child, how I’ve missed your face. It’s been three hundred years since I’ve last seen you.”

Allura’s face fell, “A Galra ship is set to attack, and I’m not sure what to do. Father, please, I need your help.”

“I would live on this bitch of an Earth to take this burden from you.”

“I don’t know if we should flee to preserve what we have, or stay and risk everything. I want to fight but the paladins of old are gone.” Allura kneeled in the grass just so she wouldn’t have to stay standing.

“I scattered the lions to keep them out of the Galra’s hands. You urged me to keep them and fight.”

“I think I understand…”

“Don’t try to understand the wrong choice, daughter. You were absolutely right. I was a fool to think we could deter Zarkon by hiding the lions. Forming Jimmy is the only way we can defeat him. You must be willing to sacrifice everything to assemble the lions and correct the mistake I’ve made.”

Allura’s eyes widened, to take on the role of manager in this specific restaurant would be no easy thing. Unknown to all the Canadian Jimmy the Greeks out there, there’s a team that’s going to do everything they can to protect them and thousands of other restaurants and food chains.

She reappeared in her own regal battle armour, it’ll be a long time before she can represent in her formal attire again. The Galra messed with the wrong fucking island.

“You five paladins were brought here for a reason. The Jimmy lions are meant to be piloted by you and only you. We must fight and continue fighting until we defeat Zarkon. Retreating is  _ not _ an option. Jimmy the Greek is the Earth’s only hope, we are the Earth’s only hope. It’s our destiny.”

Shiro nodded, “We’re with you, Manager.”

Allura led them to a chamber with specialized wardrobes each containing colour-coordinated space suits. “Gear up, team. It’s time to fight in style.”

As they all got dressed, they could almost imagine they were all a part of a montage, it was that cool. Allura opened up a box with hand-print recognition or some other, inside were weird boomerang shaped things.

“These are your bayards, traditional weapons of Jimmy the Greek paladins. They will each take a specific shape for each paladin.”

The paladins took their designated bayards. Hunk’s immediately turned into a lemon cannon, Lance got a tiny freezer that blasted cool air. Keith got a steak knife and cutting board for a shield. Pidge’s bayard turned into a manual food processor, and it was  _ very _ manual. It was like a knife that fit on some brass knuckles. After some taunting from Lance, Pidge discovered that his bayard could also fry things very well.

Unfortunately, Shiro's bayard was lost with the last paladin, so Allura just gave him a microwave to put inside the Black Lion to make it up to him. Country Shiros will have to make do.

“You’ll have to take the Red Lion from inside Sendak’s ship,” Allura explained.

“That’s a… Giant ass ship, how are we gonna know where the Red Lion is?” Keith asked, not hearing the distant screaming about another kind of ship from somewhere else.

Pidge grinned, “Well, it’s not a matter of ‘we’, it’s a matter of ‘you’.”

“Don’t worry though, once we get you in, you’ll be able to suss out it’s presence,” Hunk said.

“Yeah, you know how you felt the Blue Lion back at the desert?” Lance asked.

“Yeah, you made fun of me for that,” Keith replied. More screaming no one heard. Seriously, how are they not catching that?

“And I’m so fucking proud of that,” Lance raised his voice a bit, “But, it’s just like that mumbo-jumbo.”

“Keith, remember the Red Lion gets moody, you have to earn its respect,” Allura said.

“Shit, I don’t even respect myself, but okay. Maybe it likes memes as much as the Blue Lion.”

Shiro reassuringly placed a hand on Keith’s shoulder, “Alright team, let’s get ready.”

They approached Sendak’s ship according to the plan. Hunk and Lance flew directly into the Galra’s field of vision, pretending to give up the lions. They both tried to ignore the Blue Lion’s verbal shitposting and the Yellow Lion’s faint loop of ‘Mamma Mia’ was somewhat comforting. They could only hope that the three paladins in the Green Lion have made it to their part of the plan.

“Status, Pidge?” Lance said.

Pidge used his ultimate hacker voice, “We’re in.”

Sendak, however, was an untrusting cold ass bitch and ordered the tractor beam to be fired.

Lance and Hunk sweated as they saw the purple orb forming before their eyes. Before their tragic sense of humour could get them decimated, their instinctive self-preservation forced them to hit their switches. The beam fired far past the Earth’s horizon, losing itself to the vastness of space before them...no, from afar, Jupiter swallowed the blast entirely. We stan a hungry queen. The Blue and Yellow Lion provided excellent commentary for this particular moment.

“ _ When your last three brain cells try to make an order at Subway. _ ”

“ _ Mamma mia, here I go again! _ ”

They almost couldn’t hear Sendak over how much louder the Yellow Lion’s speakers have gotten, “You lied to us! We’re launching fighters!”

Lance yelled, “Who does that bitch think he is, calling us light tubas? Bitch never joined a band!” He sighed, “Hunk! Take out the ion cannon while I taunt the hell out of these jerks!”

“Sounds great!”

Keith, Shiro, and Pidge followed Keith’s feelings of where the Red Lion was. Shiro got some flashbacks upon closer inspection of the purple hallway they were in.

“I… I’ve been here before. When the Galra captured us, they held us captive in this cruiser.”

“Maybe the rest of the crew are here, we have to rescue them!” Pidge shouted.

“No, we don’t have time. We have to take the Red Lion and head back to Lesbos.”

“But we can’t just leave prisoners behind.”

“Listen, no one understands that more than I do; but in war, we have to make hard choices. Let’s get moving.”

“NO! Head Chef Holt is my father, he and my brother were the ones at the Kerberos Competition with you.”

“Head Chef Holt is your father?”

“YES, I’ve been searching everywhere for him and my brother, and now that I’m this close, I’m not going to give up looking! I refuse to!”

“I’m going with you.”

Keith approached them from up ahead the hallway then, “What?”

“I remember where the prisoners are held. Keith, you go find the Red Lion.”

“No, I didn’t hear what you said earlier?”

“Minor change of plans, you’ll be fine. Remember, patience yields focus.”

“Wait, by myself? Is that what you said earlier?” It was too late of course, Shiro and Pidge already ran off and it’s not like he could follow.

So Keith ran off his own way. When he came across a fork in the hallways.  _ Great, which way now? _ Keith looked straight ahead at a ominous, important-looking door with an interesting Galra insignia he had no time to analyze.  _ Probably through this door, following movies where important things are usually hidden _ .

As a Galra member patrolled too close for comfort, Keith ducked to hide at the foot of the door between two pedestal-like objects around it.

Outside the enemy ship, Hunk tried to headbutt the cannon, only to find there was a shield around it.

“What the hell? They put a forcefield on their cannon?” The flickering of the purple looked like a good sign.

On the island, Allura tried to put out the barrier to defend the surrounding area against attacks, but it remained for only a second.

Coran opened the hatch of a power box, “All the barrier crystals are out of alignment.”

“We have to fix that immediately.”

“But we’re too big! How will we do it?”

“ _ Ay yo, step aside bread crumbs. We got this. _ ” A voice squeaked. Allura’s four mice crawled inside and pressed all their combined weight against the crystals to realign them.

“How do they know how to do this?” Coran asked.

“They probably work out.”

Checking back on the computers, the mice seemed to have been successful. Coran broke a sweat trying to ask them to make him a rice bowl. The mice simply snuck away and snacked on some tzatziki sauce instead, pretending not to have understood him.

Keith determined it was not the big ominous door after many failed attempts of breaking in and realizing that he didn’t even feel the Red Lion’s presence beyond it. Whatever, it was fun throwing things at it.

He was still forced to run around following his hunches, though. He ran after the presence of the lion like a mouse to tzatziki sauce (?yeah?), only to end up back at the ominous door.

“UGH! YOU’VE GOTTA BE KIDDING!” This was quickly followed by a generous stream of airhorn noises.

Keith sighed and caught his breath, “Right… Patience yields focus.” He shut his eyes and let his inner mind do the work, he saw a route to the Red Lion, so he promptly ran off to follow that.

Shiro and Pidge only had luck finding a weird floating sentry bot in their mission to find the rest of the Kerberos crew. Pidge cut it down and rewired it to be an ally, though, so not too eventful. The triangular prism’s magenta accents became blue, for convenient identification purposes.

“Now it’s working with us. I’m gonna call him Clover!” Clover happily followed along as Shiro and Pidge continued running through the halls.

Clover helped unlock a prison door from Shiro’s memory, Pidge hopefully looked in the room to recognize someone, but they were all foreign faces. No one inside met their eyes, and they shrunk against the wall. Pidge’s disappointment was thinly veiled.

“Don’t be afraid, we’re here to rescue you,” Shiro said to them.

“It’s you...the Champion,” A hopeful man’s voice responded, “That man can wield one of the Galra’s most impressive butcher knives unlike any other. If anyone can save us, it’s him.”

“Wh-what did you call me…?” To be fair, the context felt more like a drunken blackout that he was just hearing about than a victorious situation to Shiro.

“We don’t have much time, let’s get to the escape pods,” Pidge said before running back out.

Shiro guided them out the door and without hesitation, the prisoners made a run for it.

Keith made it to the Red Lion, somehow. Its red forcefield bathed the entire room in an eerie red glow. He placed a hand on the shield and tried to coax it out like a horse.

“Come on, open up.”

No response.

“It’s me, Keith, your buddy.”

No response.

“It’s  _ me _ . Keith, your paladin!”

No response.

“I am your paladin!”

From inside the forcefield, Keith’s words were muffled.  _ Do y’all hear sum’n? _ The Red Lion thought to itself.

Keith knocked on the forcefield (no...totally not following the advice of Lance here) before the Galra dicks started shooting from who knows where.

Keith whipped out his cutting board and it caught on fire under the brunt of the Galra’s guns.

“I am bonding with you!” Keith was bonding with the lion as well as a mother bonds with her child shortly after childbirth when she is exhausted and frankly, kind of pissed, “Come on! We’re connected! You should be speaking to me in memes or something!”

Keith had to focus on the battle at hand before worrying about the lion. He grabbed his steak knife and started chopping the robotic Galra things. Within seconds of butchering two robot legs, he was pushed back by more gunfire and he lost his beautiful thick cutting board.

Seeing no other options, Keith force-ejected everyone by opening up the room’s floor with the press of a button. He could see everyone fall into the ocean as he hung onto the control board. But like an idiot bastard, Keith slipped and started to fall from too high up.

He thought he was done for until he saw a giant jaw open to catch him.

“ _ Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? _

_ Thou art immensely foul and unpleasant. _

_ Though that’s that, you’re my dumbass son, I guess. _ ”

Keith grumbled, “You’re not fucking Shakespeare, but go off, I guess.”

Pidge and Shiro led the prisoners to the escape pod, which looked more like a submarine, and more Galra dickheads decide to show up then. Shiro didn’t have his bayard, but man could chop like a motherfucker. After gaining control over a migraine that adults just have sometimes, his robotic arm began punching and slicing shit.

The prisoners, already on board the escape sub, closed the doors after a final, “Thank you, Shiro.”

“Wait how did you-?” Shiro was interrupted by a faint crashing in the ocean.

Pidge elbowed him, “That was awesome! Where did you learn to fight with that?”

“No fucking clue, kid.”

Outside, the Yellow Lion launched a giant tomato at the ship, effectively breaking the forcefield and denting the cannon.

The Green and Red Lion showed themselves to be safe, and everyone quickly made their way back to Jimmy the Greek, to the Galra’s dismay.

“They stole the Red Lion.”

Sendak groaned, “I was tired of that thing reciting poems, but go after them! Fire the ion cannon!”

“Sir, the cannon’s broken.”

“Send drones to fix it!”

Now inside the restaurant, everyone was waiting for Shiro and the Black Lion to connect, hopefully with better poetry to come from it, at least. The grandiose Altean door lifted from the floor like a curtain, revealing the majestic Black Lion in all its glory.

The Black Lion kickstarted a roar fest, but their happiness was short-lived, obviously. Alarms sounded from the control room of the building, and Coran swore at what they saw. The Galra aircraft was descending onto the island.

“Sendak is entering the Lesbian area! We need Jimmy  _ now _ !”

Shiro hopped into the Black Lion’s cockpit and everyone made haste out of the castle. The Galra’s cannon was somehow repaired, the giant tomato probably very tiny in the ocean now. That wasn’t the problem, though, they were now aiming that thing at the castle. They fired and suddenly the entire stretch of ground was rumbling, the barrier somehow held up, but it was getting weaker fast.

“I can provide cover, but you have to form Jimmy now or we’ll all be destroyed!” Allura shouted.

“Oof, no pressure,” Hunk said.

The Galra fired again, almost destroying the particle barrier.

“Alright, Team Jimmy! This seems hard but the only way we can succeed is to give it all we’ve got! We can do this! Are you with me?”

Everyone nodded, and ran towards the outside of the barrier.

“Okay, how do we do this?” Lance asked.

“Good question. Anyone have any ideas on how to form Jimmy?” Shiro asked the team.

There were no ideas that worked. The lions were running in nice formation as they got shot at, though. They briefly broke apart from the synchronized running-for-their-life to fight some of the aircraft floating after them. The Yellow Lion crashed into the Red Lion in Hunk’s effort to combine, only resulting in the Yellow Lion showering compliments over the Red Lion’s tough exterior and the latter planning out its freefall to the bottom of a cliff in iambic pentameter.

“Okay, team! Let’s just fly in formation and maybe we’ll combine,” Shiro said as they all descended into more panic. “One, two, three, Jimmy!” Shiro cued.

The Red Lion got its wish of at least leaving a clifftop as all the lion began to fly off its edge in a V-formation like a bunch of graceful, aggressive swans.

“Nothing’s happening,” Shiro commented.

Lance and Hunk thought they felt something, but it was actually the Galra ship doing its alien shit and abducting them with one of those beams.

“We the shit?” Lance said quietly.

On the ship, Sendak commanded, “Send a report to Zarkon: 'Gotteem'.”

The ion cannon fired one last time, wiping out the particle barrier entirely and with it, any hopes of winning.

As Allura looked on from inside, she didn’t want to believe this was how everything would end. They were supposed to be able to witness expansions to Jimmy the Greek and its menus, not watch it go down like this.

Shiro shouted, “No. We can do it, we are the Earth’s only hope! We can’t give up, if we do this shit together, we’ll win together!”

“Yeah!” The four other paladins chorused.

In all honesty, Shiro also didn’t want to die before he used the sick microwave Allura gifted him.

Based on these hopes, they successfully form Jimmy, as anyone would tell by the minute-long transformation sequence that everyone  _ had _ to wait for.

Sendak staggered back, “Jimmy?”

“WE FUCKING DID IT Y’ALL OH MY GOD,” Keith screamed.

“WE FORMED JIMMY,” Pidge screamed.

“I’M A LEG!” Hunk screamed, the happiest of all.

“NOAH FENCE BUT HOW DID WE DO THAT,” Lance screamed.

“I DON’T KNOW BUT LET’S GET THAT ION CANNON,” Shiro screamed.

With everyone screaming, they flew the giant humanoid amalgamation up to the ship to destroy the cannon. So, a typical Saturday evening for them.

Jimmy gripped the cannon and yanked it out of its fixture before yeeting it into space, maybe Jupiter would enjoy a more solid meal. Jimmy then punched a hole through the roof and blew the ship up from the inside. He stomped around and continued to blast shit apart, forcing Sendak and some random guy to retreat.

And just because cool guys don’t look at explosions, Jimmy ended it off by standing tall as the ship exploded behind him. It was a good fucking Saturday.

\-----

The paladins took their stuffy helmets off and took a proper breath for the first time that day. Everyone celebrated the defeat, but Pidge was a bit glum.

Shiro placed a hand on his shoulder, “We will not stop searching until we find your brother and father. Wherever they are, I know they’d be proud of you.”

“We won this battle, but this is just the beginning. Zarkon will not stop until he has those lions,” Allura said grimly, “Which means we’ll have to get on with killing him someday. And the day we take that bitch ass bastard out is going to be a good day.”

“Well! Good thing you paladins know what you’re doing because you’ll need to form Jimmy again and again,” Coran said.

Lance laughed nervously, “Aw shit. We barely survived doing that this one time.”

“And you only fought one ship! Wait until you have a whole fleet of...uh, food trucks. It’s not gonna be easy, being the defenders of the kitchen.” Coran said, very reassuringly.

“Defenders of the Kitchen, huh?” Shiro and the gang dramatically gazed into the distance as if waiting for their husband to return from the war, “That’s got a nice ring to it.”

“What are we looking at?” Allura whispered.

“We’re probably enjoying the beautiful Lesbian dusk surrounding the lions,” Coran whispered back.

It was indeed a beautiful Lesbian dusk, worthy of even Thor, and enjoy it they did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sitting through the first chapter of this massive shitpost! [extra shitpostin' for you](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VZgDi6Vm8Eko0Xlj9IteyE8NJwH9TMghKik2Fp5lRH8/edit?usp=sharing)  
> (also we ended up referencing a lot of stuff, so we'll leave that as another adventure for you to embark on, this fic is a nightmare but it's _our_ nightmare now, hold on tight for the ride!)  
>  ((shiro's bolded dialogue in this chapter is based on one of iliza shlesinger's stand-ups, which is probably the most obscure thing to even use but hey))  
> a little snippet of one small brainstorming session: shiro, the god of lesbians. shiro is thor


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